Written
by Lady Gemini-J
Summary: Andy comes back from project Dakota and doesn't quite know how she still feels about Sam, so she searches for a word made up of four letters.


**Summery: Andy comes back from project Dakota and doesn't quite know how she still feels about Sam, so she searches for a word made up of four letters. **

**Thank you for all your kind words on Keeping me and Keeping you, hope you'll enjoy this one too!**

**Disclaimer; still not mine, but anyway...**

**Written **

It was strange being home, answering to her own name, even calling Nick, Nick rather than Simon felt weird.

But it felt good.

They'd been home for two weeks and just started back on patrol rotation after the mandatory psych evaluations, and leave and the tiresome debriefing.

She'd caught up with her friends, had dinners with her dad, and life was sliding back into normalcy.

Except in one department.

She'd kept him blocked out of her mind for six months while working UC with Nick, but now that she was back it was a lot easier said than done when she had to face him at work everyday.

The first time she had seen him was when she returned to the barn for her first day of patrol, and even knowing that he knew she was back, it just wasn't as easy as she thought it would be.

Traci had told her that he had made detective, so she knew he wouldn't be in uniform, when she finally saw him, but she had just expected, or rather hoped that he would try and seek her out before she returned to work.

But he never did.

He kept his distance, no showing up at her condo, no voicemails and no letters slipped under her door.

Coming down the hallway, she was lost in thought when out of nowhere he was coming down the same hallway. Until he changed direction and disappeared behind a closed door in the hall.

He made no attempt to even recognize her presence.

In parade they were welcomed back, amidst cheers and applause, and letting her eyes flow over the room, she found his focused on the floor.

He wasn't even looking in her direction.

The realization that she had not been forgiven ran trough her as they were dismissed, a cold glance being passed his way as she passed him on her way out of the room.

Shift passed in a blaze, Sam now totally shut out of her mind as she set her attention on doing her job properly, doing what she chose to do after he so coldly dumped her outside the Penny.

Taking a shower after shift and agreeing to meet Traci at the Penny, Andy found her thoughts drifting over to Sam even though she tried to push them away.

The hot water of the shower pelting down on her skin as she accepted the fact that she was disappointed.

Disappointed that he had not made any attempts to contact her, disappointed that they were so far apart.

Disappointed in herself for giving up the best thing she had ever had in her life by letting him go when he said the only thing that she had ever wanted, and choosing her career over him because she couldn't take her uniform off.

Finishing her shower and grabbing a cab, Andy made her way to the Penny, for the first time in seven months she was going to set foot in a place that held so many memories, both happy and sad.

Finding Traci, she sat down and found a beer already waiting for her. Their conversation flowed, wistful topics splurged over their tongues.

Twenty minutes later Mrs Nash phoned Traci to tell her Leo was sick, so Traci excused herself apologetically, before racing out the door, leaving Andy alone at the table they occupied to be consumed by her thoughts.

Sam came in soon after Traci left and planted himself down on his usual bar stool, his need to drink in solitude rather evident.

Chris had left, opting to work on his family situation, and Nick was probably groveling to Gail for forgiveness again, Dov had a date and Oliver was spending time with his daughters, so that left Sam and Andy alone together, but so far apart.

Ordering a tequila and another beer, Andy willed herself to finally sit and watch him with his back facing her and let her mind try and find a label to how she still felt about him.

That shouldn't be so hard right?

Sliding off her chair, she grabbed a wad of napkins off the corner of the bar before resuming her seat. Digging her bag, she pulled out a pen before setting a napkin in front of her and scribbling the beginning of a sentence across the pale white of the napkin.

_ him._

Simple, short and only four letters she needed to fill in.

Slamming back the tequila, she let her eyes slide over to him to find him tear his gaze away from hers in the mirror behind the bar.

Grabbing another napkin off the pile Andy though of four lettered words that would fill the spaces on the napkin now pushed a little to the left.

Words like jerk and dork filled her thoughts, but she wasn't looking for a word to describe him, or his behavior, but rather a word to describe how she still felt about him.

Her hand moved and the word hurt appeared on the napkin, because she knew she had hurt him, she had seen it in his eyes when she told him she didn't care anymore, but still the word didn't fit.

She didn't hate him, even though the word crossed her mind, it was only because it was four letters long.

Setting her pen down, she glanced another look in his direction to find him again watching her through the mirror before he looked down at his glass, leaving her to instead watch him.

Taking a sip of her beer, she tried to fumble for an excuse as to why this was so hard, but no excuses came up, and the more she thought about it, the more determined she became to do this before leaving.

Picking up the pen, her mind cleared itself as she pinched her eyes closed and let memories sweep over her, their vivid images consuming her.

Soon her hand was moving, ink filling the napkin as she wrote down every four lettered word she could think of in the hopes of finding one that would fit.

_Good_

_Real_

_Bold_

_Blue_

_Cold_

_Calm_

_Evil_

Reading over the words she had written, Andy stifled a giggle, describing herself as any of those would defiantly not be applicable.

A few words did however fit, making her smile slip off her face as she stared at them.

_Hurt_

_Lost_

_Numb_

_Quit_

Reality of those words stared at her from the white surface, she had hurt him and lost him and it had made her feel numb until she came home because she had quit on him, quit on them.

Staring at the words, her heart ached at her own stupidity as her hand reached out and lifted her beer closer to her lips.

Setting the beer down, Andy's eyes went in search of Sam, this time his head was down as he kept his eyes focused on the glass in front of him.

Andy grabbed the napkin that held the open spaces for her four lettered word and hastily scribbled the word that made perfect sense on the dashes before she shoved her pen into her bag and left the Penny without a backwards glance.

Sam watched her leave in a whirlwind.

He'd been watching her since he noticed her presence behind him.

He saw her making attempts to write on a napkin, before she would catch him watching her, so he would break their lingering gazes after seconds and just let his eyes drown in his drink until they were drawn to her again.

He knew she was back, but seeing her, that just side swiped him before he could work up the nerve to actually go up to her and say what he'd been rehearsing in his head for six months.

It took every ounce of willpower and self restraint he possessed to fight the urge of showing up at her condo and he had even gone as far as driving over to her street a few times to park outside her building and just sit in his truck and wait for her to catch him stalking her.

That had been hard to keep under control for the last two weeks, ever since he heard that they were back.

He spent six months praying that she would be okay when she came home, that she would come home.

He spent those same six months waiting for her, without ever even considering getting over her or moving on.

He was waiting for her to come home, and make the first move, show some kind of sign that he wasn't waiting in vain, or that it was over permanently.

If and when that time came, he would accept her decision, but until she made it abundantly clear that they were done, he wasn't giving up, he was just leaving it up to her.

He gave her six months to think about it, six months for his words to sink in, and six months for her to accept that it was just the way it was.

Now seeing her, and seeing no signs of how this was supposed to go, he couldn't resist the temptation to watch her.

He loved doing that, just leaving his eyes to take her in when she thought he wasn't watching.

Slipping off his seat at the bar, Sam made his way over to the table she had been seated at, he was intrigued to know what had consumed her so completely that she was oblivious to the world around her.

Finding the napkins, Sam picked them up and read each word carefully, his heart not responding well to some that she had inked on to them.

But the second one, the one that she had filled her four letters in on made him smile.

Gently folding the napkins, Sam shoved them into his pocket before throwing some cash on the bar counter and leaving the Penny.

The next morning Andy was early, her desire to sleep still not participating willingly with the actual action.

Opening her locker, a small white object fluttered out and made its way do to the floor where it came to rest in silence.

Bending down to pick it up, Andy found her writing scribbled across the napkin from the Penny yesterday, the ones she left on the table when she left.

Only now there was another familiar scrawl marring the paper too.

Andy felt his presence in the room, and looked up to find him leaning against a locker a few down from hers, his shoulder settled silently against the cold metal.

He was just standing there silently, watching her intently as though he was waiting.

Glancing back down to the napkin in her hand, Andy read over the words that he had added.

She had written

_I miss him. _

Sam had written _I miss her _underneath it, their letters tangling together.

Under that he had penned

_I love her._

Reading it Andy's head snapped up to find him still there, his reason for waiting becoming clearer, he was waiting for her to respond.

Looking back at the napkin, Andy read the line beneath the one she read to find I want her staring back at her.

Under that was_ I need her. _

Under that was_ I hurt her_, followed by _I lost her_.

Towards the bottom of the napkin he had added words that weren't four letters long, but reading over them it didn't matter.

Sam had written _I'm sorry._

But the very last sentence made her eyes tear up and her hand begin to tremble as she read over the question he had written.

_Does she still love him?_

Andy didn't need a split second to think about it, she didn't need to let ot roll through her mind, she knew her answer without even having to look at him.

Sam held his breath as he watched her walk into the locker room.

Following her inside, she was so wrapped up in retrieving the napkin up off of the floor that she only noticed him when she stood up.

He let her read over his words in silence, and waited.

He waited two years to finally be hers, before he waited a few months to screw it up. He waited six months for her to come home, and he waited six months for this moment. If he waited that long to get here, he could wait another five minutes for her to read a few words.

He knew the moment that she read the last line, the simple question he had penned at the bottom of that napkin.

Her eyes misted over, her hand began to tremble, and her breathing became a little quicker, almost audible in the space between them.

Her eyes flew up to meet hers, her face washed in so many emotions that Sam couldn't keep up labeling them.

And still, Sam was kept waiting as she tried to decide, or tried to overthink it.

Until she nodded, very faintly and very slowly, her tears finally breaking free as they left traces down her cheeks.

She stood still, frozen to the spot, as Sam pushed off the locker and unfolded his arms, holding them open.

He left the decision to her, for her to decide if she wanted to step into his embrace and allow him to wrap his arms around her.

She clung to the napkin, stepping forwards blinded with tears until she met the solid force of his body as hers crashed into it, her arms finding their way around his neck.

Sam let out a breath in relief, when she crashed into him.

Wrapping his arms around her, he felt her tears drip onto his arm where her face was tucked into his chest, just below his shoulder.

His hand left her back and ran up to her hair, where it smothered over the smooth velvet before her head suddenly lifted up, her eyes looking deeply into his.

Her tears had subsided, her eyes still red and her cheeks still wet, so he let his hands move up to cup her face, his thumbs wiping away at the glistening tear tracks.

Feeling his self control slip, Sam leaned in as she let her face lean into his hand, her eyes fluttering closed to be hidden under her heavy eyelids.

Her hands had drifted up to rest against his chest, her palms flat against the material of his T-shirt.

Brushing his nose over hers, his breath blowing out over her face, Sam gave her the option to shut him down as he made his intentions very clear. When her hands twisted to fist in his shirt and pulled him closer, Sam knew she wasn't going to pull away, she wanted it as much as he did.

Letting her pull him in, his lips found hers, a low sweet moan escaping her lips at the contact.

Her lips moved to devour his, her tongue slipping into his mouth as soon as he granted her access without her having to ask.

Sam pulled her closer, before spinning her around and backing her into the locker next to hers, his body pressing against hers as he tried to get closer.

Andy's hands ran up his shoulders and over his face, into his hair where she wrapped her fingers in it.

Breathlessly, Sam pulled away, his lips leaving hers and gently gliding their way over her face and down to her neck as her body arched against his in response to him sucking and biting the soft skin.

Suddenly remembering where they were, how they got here, and what they were doing Sam slammed on the brakes and pulled away.

Andy's eyes flew open, a blush taking over her cheeks as they took their surroundings in.

Sam had his hands braced on the locker behind her head, his arms level to her head, a wicked smile tugging his lips up and his dimples showing.

"We need to talk first". Sam said, his voice so lost in desire Andy merely nodded.

"After shift?".

Andy nodded again, not trusting her voice.

"Penny?".

Andy shook her head this time, her cheeks flaming in red as she looked down before looking straight back at Sam, leaning forwards and whispering in his ear.

Sam raised an eyebrow as the warmth of her breath fled over his ear and neck, setting off a new hunger to course its way through his veins.

Ducking under his arms, Andy slipped away, stopping in front of the door before turning to face him, her lips lit up in a huge smile.

"I love you too Sam". She whispered before reaching for the door and leaving the room, Sam shaking his head as he watched her leave.

She had agreed to meet him after shift, to talk, but had whispered a very seductive 'Bring an overnight bag' in his ear before walking off.

She was so optimistic and so positive that they would talk things through in one night, that she was letting him stay over. She was confident that they would fix things, that they would work it out.

That thought brought a bigger smile to his lips, knowing that she was giving him what he had asked for- a chance to make it up to her.

**Thanks for taking some time to read this, hope you'll review it! **


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